


Where The Road Parts

by spacemonkey



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Complete, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-28
Updated: 2013-08-28
Packaged: 2017-12-24 22:15:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/945291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacemonkey/pseuds/spacemonkey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bobby said that he was home now. For Dean, it was all he had left.</p><p>(Set directly after 5x22)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where The Road Parts

His watch read past two and the keys were in the ignition, waiting to be turned. Dean wanted to take off, go someplace else, watch the headlights bounce off the road, keep driving until he lost his mind and kept a smile on his face. He didn’t know what he wanted, and that was the main thing keeping him from turning the key. 

He sat there still, for a good half an hour, until Bobby opened the front door and just stood there without the porch light on, waiting and knowing. Dean wondered what Bobby would do if he said fuck it and drove off right then and there, his arm hanging out the window, middle finger extended the entire way. Shouting something stupid like, “Fuck authority!” It was the sort of crap that Hollywood would make and he’d mock and be jealous of. He pictured Bobby chasing him through the dark with a shotgun until he couldn’t run anymore, and that was probably the most extreme version and the least likely, but it was enough to give Dean a tired chuckle and push him straight out of the car and back towards the house.

Bobby didn’t say anything, just gave him a pat on the shoulder and left him standing next to the couch, apparently confident that he wouldn’t try to run off again. “This is your home, Dean,” Bobby had said, earlier when they had gotten back from Stull Cemetery, and Dean couldn’t really dispute that any longer, as tired as he was.

He settled on the couch, uneasy with himself and waited for heavy footsteps until he felt sick to the stomach. He could hear Bobby rustling around in the kitchen, and the air was still for the first time in a long time. Dean didn’t know what to make of that, and when he heard a noise that sounded like the beat of wings, he couldn’t convince himself it was the wind. 

“Cas?”

Dean waited until he was sure he was alone, and then he couldn’t sit there any longer. He wandered downstairs and up, taking it all in until he ended up right where he started, looking out the window with his fists balled at his sides. 

He was home at Bobby’s, and it was all he had left, apart from his memories.

That wasn’t good enough for Dean.

***

Dean remembered being maybe two months shy of facing the music, sitting with a beer in his hand on the hood of a car that had seen better days. It wasn’t the best place to be at Bobby’s, not by a long shot, but it was a place, and there had been dust on his jeans and grease staining his fingers, and he’d drunk from his beer and stared at the sky, like you do when you’re that close to meeting your maker. 

Bobby had joined him when he was on his third, holding a six pack with a look on his face that told Dean that Sam would never know. Dean had felt like he should say something profound, or at the very least, anything at all, but like always Bobby had gotten there first.

“Shut up and drink your beer.”

Sometimes, Dean found it was best not to argue, so he hadn’t, he’d just sat there and did what he was told until they had ran out of beer, and it had been hard for Sam not to find out when he’d stumbled into the house a few hours later with a grin on his face as weary as anything.

The table had been covered with books, some opened, some still dusty and piled, and if there was any place in Bobby’s house that Dean had known he wouldn’t miss, it would have been that table, with Sam looking at him like he was the reason all the puppies in the world had lost their charm. That look, that pile of books, that goddamn headache? Nope, he wouldn’t miss it in the slightest.

Except that he would.

***  
Dean had this theory, this thought in the back of his mind, that one day he would wake up and the world wouldn’t suck anymore. There would be smiles all round, Sam by his side, Bobby across from him and Cas smiling like he meant it, and Dean would hold a beer in his hand and point to each of them as he laughed, “I had a real bad dream, Auntie Em, and you and you and you were there,” while Sam shook his head and grinned and finally interrupted, “we get it, Dean.”

He didn’t believe it would ever happen, it was more of a crazy wish, that niggling voice right there where he couldn’t reach, but it was something he wanted to hold on to, till it was pried from his fingers. 

***

There was this guy, this angel, and Dean had still been weird about calling him that, because it was weird. It was a freakin’ nightmare to his sanity, so Dean just called him Cas.

It had been late at night in Bobby’s kitchen that they’d met, for the second time, and it had been as shit stirring as anyone could have hoped for, and then it had been over and Dean had been left with this feeling that he just couldn’t shake. He’d tried, real hard, and he’d tossed and turned and drank and given up and he’d ended up right back in that kitchen, waiting.

He’d been disappointed, but still, every time he walked into Bobby’s kitchen, he’d think of Cas. Dean had tried not to put much thought into the whole situation. Sometimes though, he couldn’t help it, and it was during those times especially that he’d reach into the fridge and pull out a bottle until he’d stop thinking.

***

He woke up and sat there, staring at the television until Bobby came along and switched the damn thing on, and Dean left the room then and downed two cups of coffee at the kitchen table, eyeing off the counter and waiting for something to happen that he just knew wouldn’t.

It wasn’t like Cas was dead. He was up there, but Dean didn’t know, and he was sure his head was going to explode at the end of all things. But Cas was still alive, he knew that much.

He scrubbed methodically in the shower because Sam wasn’t. He found himself wishing that Cas hadn’t fixed his face, and not for the first time, because he needed that memento to keep him going. 

***

Sam had liked Bobby’s bathroom. He said it was well designed, a good size, and surprisingly clean. He never said the last part in front of Bobby, which was probably for the best, because Bobby prided himself on being clean when generally he was neat at best. 

Dean remembered countless times of sitting on the closed toilet seat while Sam stitched and bandaged and winced in sympathy, and other times of Bobby fixing the both of them up, and those times he didn’t mind. He could pick and choose a few times, right after he’d gotten out from the pit, and a few times before, that he’d stood in the shower and shivered till the water ran from hot to cold to painful. 

For him, nothing was as bad as the times that Sam was there on that toilet seat, with Dean patching him up and Bobby standing there waiting his turn. 

He hated Bobby’s bathroom because of those times. When Sam asked why, Dean just told him that the curtains were fugly. 

Bobby had taken Sam out to pick up a few supplies one day in the dead of winter, and Dean had been walking around the house, trying to find something to do that didn’t involve opening a book because the TV needed to be fixed. He’d been hoping that when he said supplies, Bobby meant a new flatscreen with all the channels you could ask for so that Dean could sit back for a day and pretend that the world wasn’t going to end, but that thought had gone out the window when he’d heard a muffled thump in the distance.

It had come from the bathroom, and it had been Cas, with blood everywhere and a look on his face that said this isn’t supposed to be happening and Dean would have been quick to agree with him if it had been said out loud. Instead, Dean had yelled his name and grabbed and wrangled until they were both on the ground, Cas with his back against the toilet, and Dean on the mat, and they’d looked at each other until Dean asked, “how?”.

He never got much of an answer, and Cas had shook his head when Dean tried to do something, so they’d sat there in silence on the bathroom floor and waited and waited until the blood began to disappear and his clothes mended themselves, and Cas vanished with not even a thank you. He’d looked like his old self, but Dean had known, and the next few times they’d seen each other, Cas had that look in his eyes that brought them both straight back to the bathroom floor.

Dean could barely walk into the room anymore, but turned out it was a necessity in life, so he had to just grin and bear it till his hair was clean and bladder empty.

***

Three days after Stull, Dean found himself lying in the back seat of his car with the music blasting The Black Album and reminding him of other times. The car hummed underneath him, calming him in a way that nothing else on earth could , and when his ears stung from the noise he just sat up and turned the volume that much higher and drank from his bottle of Jack until his throat burned and he nearly choked from the whole stupid situation. 

He finished the bottle before he finished the album, blindly changed tapes, and punched the back of the chair when Rock of Ages started, and Dean was out the car and screaming at the sky with an empty bottle in his hand. He wasn’t even sure he was saying words, but damnit he was pissed, and the world should know just how much.

He’s sure he yelled Cas, at least once or twice, and stupidly a part of him expected an answer.

***

They had never put much thought into Christmas, until it was Dean’s last and they’d attempted some nog and a few decorations and killed a couple of Pagan Gods. Like all normal families did.

As it turned out, that Christmas hadn’t been Dean’s last, and it had only been three months after he’d dug himself outta a coffin that they’d ended up right back there, not knowing how to go about the whole Christmas thing but wanting to try their hardest. 

Bobby had set the table as well as he could muster, and he’d made the nog so well that he was the only one that could drink it, but they’d made a toast anyway and sat around eating steak, the typical Christmas dinner, except Sam had been recovering from a concussion so he just picked at it. He’d been the only one to wrap a gift though, a bottle of beer for Bobby and for Dean? His old beat up cassette of The Black Album.

Cas had stopped by, in the middle of it all, and before he could say anything about a seal or his old man upstairs, he’d been pulled into a chair next to Dean and handed a beer, which he had looked at and politely ignored for the next twenty minutes of awkwardness while the rest of them talked about cars and tits and pointedly not the seals because it was Christmas. He had left when things turned obscene, and Dean had laughed his ass off and decided that Christmas wasn’t that bad after all.

***

He was drunk, he was going to be severely hung over three hours on when he woke up with his stomach twisted and his tongue furry, and Dean fell asleep with a blanket over him and Bobby calling him some sort of name, and he looked around the room with something close to fondness before his eyes shut and he dreamed.

It wasn’t anything special, he was just walking, following a path with trees to the left of him, Cas to the right, and he made a joke about being stuck in the middle like that Stealers Wheel song and it made perfect sense in his dream. Cas laughed and Dean figured then that he wasn’t real, and they kept walking until they came to a lake and Dean figured what the hell and tossed in a line. 

“You like fishing, Cas?”he asked.

“No,” Cas replied.

“Then fuck you,” Dean laughed, and something snagged his line and he started to reel in as Cas watched, rapt. He woke up with his stomach twisted and tongue furry, and didn’t have time to try and figure that one out before he was tossing his cookies in the bucket Bobby had generously provided. After he’d scrubbed his mouth and settled back down with a glass of water, Dean figured he wouldn’t fall back asleep, but twenty minutes later he was dreaming again, and there was a little frozen girl with matches burning her fingertips in the snow, and Dean couldn’t save her.

***

Dean dreamed constantly. He always had since he could remember, sometimes about good times, others bad, and one time that he could recall he’d been Charlie at the chocolate factory, with Willy Wonka force feeding him all the chocolate and candy a nine year old could hope for, and he’d woken up not sure whether it was a dream or nightmare, but at least he hadn’t ended up on that goddamn boat ride. Sam had cried and cried during that part of the movie, and even their dad had seemed disturbed.

He’d dreamed one night in the fall, on Bobby’s couch with his jacket covering his body and his arm good enough for a pillow, and he’d ended up in the kitchen looking like a penguin and hating every minute of it.

“Nice tux.” Sam had smirked, and watched Dean as he tugged on his bowtie. “You ready?”

“For what?”

“Dean, it’s easy. You put your hand on my shoulder, I put my hand on your waist, and then we go one-two-three.” Sam had shrugged like it was no big deal, adding, “You have to practice”, Dean had stared like he was fucking crazy, and before Sam could take a step and even attempt to whatever, Dean had opened his eyes right back on the couch and was quick to put that in the nightmare folder because dancing was bad enough, but Sam teaching him was the worst thing he could imagine, and he’d done time. Still, the next morning he couldn’t help but tell Sam, “you suck” over a strong cup of coffee. 

He’d dreamed the next night, in a hotel in the middle of Iowa with his jacket covering his body and Sam snuffling in the bed next to him and a knife under his pillow, and he was right back there in Bobby’s kitchen, but instead of Sam, there was Cas.

“Cas.”

“Dean.”

There had been a pause, and Dean had raised an eyebrow. “Good talk. Uh, what’s up?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re not in trouble, are ya? Got a message or something?”

“No.”

“Oh.” They’d stood there like matchstick men, Cas against the counter like he belonged there, Dean with his thoughts racing, and it took a while, but he landed on it eventually. “You’re not you, are you?”

It was stupid, because he’d had dreams before of Cas, dreams where it wasn’t a visit, it was just his stupid brain, but for some reason they surprised him every time and he had to shake his head when Cas smiled and said plainly, “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Right.” Dean had smiled, ruefully and they’d been kissing before he even knew he’d moved, because that’s how dreams worked sometimes. When Dean woke up, it was with a sleepy smile on his face until his brain switched on properly and he landed some place between holy shit and what the fuck. 

It was a long while before he realized that place in between wasn’t hell.

***  
It took him five days, but Dean finally decided it was time to go. He couldn’t sit in his own boredom and wallow in self pity, not any more. Sam wouldn’t have wanted him to do that. Cas-

Well, who knew what he wanted anymore. Dean was sure if he drank a bit more, he would be yelling at the ceiling, asking Cas exactly what, but as it was, he stuck to the few he’d been given, and Bobby had nodded at him with that look on his face that said no more, so he was stuck there. 

He packed up his things, and it took all of five minutes. Sam’s stuff was staying at Bobby’s, in the spare room with the door that squeaked badly, and maybe one day Dean would go through it all and pick and choose what to keep before keeping it all. For now, he kept the door shut.

It was late, and Dean was in no way capable of driving, so he said goodnight to Bobby with every intention of saying good morning before he left and settled down on the couch. He figured he would never fall asleep and surprised himself, opening his eyes down in Bobby’s panic room and finding Cas sitting quietly on the bed.

“Hello Dean,” he said after a long stretch of them staring at each other. “You look well.”

“I’m glad you finally figured out sarcasm.” Dean scratched at the back of his head and huffed when Cas looked honestly puzzled by his words. “I look like shit, Cas.”

“You never could.”

Dean had been ready to launch into a barrage of fast slinging insults and put downs, fucking pissed at the way Cas had left things but too chickenshit to say it to anyone but the Cas his mind made up. He’d been so ready to do all that, and maybe even hold him down and kiss him because damnit, he missed the guy, but there was something in the way Cas had spoken that made him stop and blink.

Cas regarded him calmly, and Dean swallowed. “Is it you?” he asked timidly.

Cas nodded, and Dean deflated. All the angry words in his mind ran away quick fast and he was suddenly incredibly aware of where he put his hands and the way his body felt really wrong, like he was on a first date or something, and Cas took all that in and smiled. “Did you think I was going to abandon you?”

Dean had, he really had, and now he felt like an idiot, even if a part of him still kind of believed it might happen yet. He shrugged, let out something close to a chuckle, and he was sitting close to Cas on the bed before he could think to stop himself. “I miss you,” he blurted out. “Shit.”

Cas didn’t say anything to that, and they sat there side by side, Dean studying the ground and Cas looking at him, and then there was a hand on Dean’s shoulder, his cheek, and he looked up and smiled ruefully. “I’m so fucking tired, Cas.”

“I know.” Cas kissed him, a real kiss completely unlike the last few they’d shared in dreams where he’d fabricated and wanted and known he was still alone. It was quick, but it would do. Dean was left feeling warm, his lips tingling and Cas kept his hand on his cheek and returned the smile, and he said, “You can rest now, Dean.”

And Dean did.


End file.
